I Told You So

Yes, I told you so.

First of all, we seem to have the constitutional crisis I predicted here :

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/the-leave-campaign-may-well-be-winning-.html

and here

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/the-british-people-have-risen-at-last-and-were-about-to-unleash-chaos.html

and , as it began to unfold, here

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/the-british-people-have-risen-at-last-and-were-about-to-unleash-chaos.html

I was confident of this because the referendum had always seemed to me to be a violation of the supremacy of Parliament. How can you have two rival democratic mandates competing for supremacy over an issue of vital national importance? Who will decide which one is in charge? The political bog into which we are now squelching is a result. The pro-EU faction are determined, with the support of the BBC and many others, to de-legitimise the anti-EU majority. Supposedly, we didn���t mean to do it, we were misled, and we didn���t really vote for what we thought we were voting for etc. I said things of this kind would happen,as they did when the people of Ireland voted against the EU constitution - and they have, and they will.

The initiative launched this week by Mishcon de Reya http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-law-idUKKCN0ZK0HZ is just part of this effort, combined with squeaky Europhile demonstrations (where do they find them, people actually enthusiastic for this lumpish, disastrous thing?) mutterings from MPs, leftover former ministers, and other grisly creatures released for the moment from the Cupboard of the Yesterdays saying that Parliament must have its say, especially if that say means the decision is overturned. Meanwhile EU supporters seek to regain full control of both corpse parties, so that the struggle is properly one-sided and there is no danger of the corpses being declared dead and buried (there is some interesting speculation to be had, in future, about what might happen if the establishment fails to regain control over Labour in the weeks to come. I hope to turn to this soon).

It was disastrous that the ���Leave��� campaign was not a party, yet (thanks to our traditions) had to conduct itself much as if it was one, more or less issuing a manifesto. And yet there is now no-one responsible for implementing that manifesto, who is in a position to do so.  Those who might be are busy trying to strangle each other. That���s why we needed a new party. That���s why we needed to destroy the Tories in 2010, and all those of you who helped miss that opportunity must now ask yourself whether you did the right thing in ���Getting Gordon Brown out��� (did you really get him or his ideas, out of anything?) by saving the Tories. I blinking well *told* you so.

The disintegration of the ���Leave��� campaign high command, shredded like a burst balloon into rags and tatters, may well have something to do with the fact that it was a strange and rather unprincipled coalition, made up in unequal parts of personal ambition, and with no permanent base or organisation. Did all its members really want to win? Just think how different this would be if we had got rid of the Tories when we had the chance, and a new political party determined to leave the EU, and with a clear stated idea of what it would do with our regained freedom, had won a general election. None of this rubbish would now be happening.

Elements inside both the two corpse parties have used the outcome as the pretext for things they had long wanted anyway.  Scores are being settled, and ambitions pursued. I am still puzzling over being asked by a BBC presenter on the day of the result about something she seemed to think was a ���collapse��� of the Labour vote. The word itself derailed my thoughts. Far from collapsing, the Labour vote had poured in multitudes into the ���Leave��� camp, expressing a sentiment, long known to me,  that metropolitan liberals never understood or acknowledged, and now spitefully and childishly deride.

By the way, as I am in general making the point that I told you so,  I ought to mention here those contributors who have over many years told me that my belief in a majority coalition of voters from both parties united round a socially conservative platform was fanciful. I think we have now established that it is not, though how it will ever be assembled again I am not sure. The party which could have contained, led and consolidated it does not exist and is not likely to do so.

 Others have also made sure that the crisis does not go to waste. I had suspected that a sort of stage-managed crisis would be inflicted on us by the markets, and so it has been. No doubt they have done reasonably well out of it, though most of the falls and rises have no objective cause.

I note that the Chancellor who has now abandoned his ludicrous and impossible commitment to balance the national books, and the currency markets who have seized the chance to achieve at least part of the long-awaited devaluation of sterling, which I have long predicted

Secondly today���s events (the BBC seem to think that the resignation of a TV presenter is more important) have rather underlined the wisdom of my repeated refusal to take UKIP seriously as a political force. The one party which surely does not need to bite its own tail at the moment is UKIP which can claim(I���m not sure if this is true, but they can claim it) to have brought about the referendum.

Hasn���t Nigel Farage  resigned at least twice before ? I think he first quit in September 2009, and then in May 2015. I shall wait and see how long this one lasts.

There has always been something fundamentally unserious about Mr Farage, epitomised for me by his foolish attitude towards the decriminalisation of illegal drugs (see http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/04/what-did-nigel-farage-say-about-drugs.html ).

And this has very much affected my view of UKIP, its tacky purple-and-yellow pound sign symbol, which always makes me think of a Pound Shop, its unfortunate Thatcherism, which has learned nothing from and forgotten nothing about that questionable and far from conservative era.

My repeated view that UKIP would never get anywhere has met with a lot of hostility here, so I open my barrage of ���I told you so���  with the latest news from the Blazer-and-Cravat-Belt. It would be hilarious if it were not so sad that, having managed to elect just one Member of Parliament at Westminster, Mr Farage cannot stand that MP, and that MP cannot stand Mr Farage.

But now to the main point, I have been irritating people ( I have even irritated myself) for months by carping about the referendum. For example : http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/02/why-i-wont-be-voting-on-referendum-day.html

And http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/no-we-have-not-escaped-from-the-eu-and-we-may-not-ever-do-so-.html

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/02/the-eu-is-our-own-hotel-california-we-can-check-out-but-well-never-leave.html

I thought initially that the ���Leave��� side were bound to lose, and in that I was wrong.  I explain this in two ways. I never imagined that two politicians of the stature of Alexander ���Boris��� Johnson and Michael Gove would actually side with ���Leave���. (This (be warned) very profane and mischievous parody suggests that Mr Johnson, at least, never intended actually to win : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a6HNXtdvVQ

Who can say how much truth there is in such speculation? The chaos which followed the ���Leave��� victory is suggestive.

And I foolishly believed that David Cameron had a coherent plan for the referendum which he himself created. After all, it was his choice, made deliberately some years ago. You would have thought he had some sort of idea a) how to conduct it successfully and b) what to do if he lost.

But when he came back from Brussels with a ���deal��� so worthless even his own supporters couldn���t think of anything nice to say about it, I knew for sure (having previously suspected it ) he hadn���t ever intended the referendum to happen, but assumed he would be spared it by a second coalition with the Liberal Democrats.  Until that naked failure, I had still been prepared to believe that Mr Cameron had a plan. They only plan he seemed to have was to scupper Labour by changing the electoral registration rules, a plan which backfired quite badly when it led to many younger voters finding they weren���t on the register any more at referendum time. If Mr Cameron had really expected a referendum, would he have pushed this legislation through Parliament in 2013-14?

I can���t begin  to speculate in what will happen next. Much depends on the behaviour of the Tory Party membership, who were massaged (mainly by a sycophantic media chorus) into choosing David Cameron last time.  Will they be as biddable when offered Mrs May? It is at least possible to imagine that they may not be, just as Labour���s members may refuse to be bossed about by the same forces. I am not sure such rebellions will do any good, though I hope they happen anyway.